DISCUSSION
The present study examined how several sociocognitive factors are associated
with attitudes toward roles in bullying. Namely, we examined how
moral disengagement, empathy, BJW, and the perception of normative
beliefs of the peer group are associated to attitudes about the roles of bully
and defender of the victim. The hypotheses overall were supported, except
for the association with belief in a just world and empathy. In fact, only
moral disengagement and the perception of normative beliefs of the peer
group predicted attitudes regarding roles in bullying. However, although
lower empathy (both affective and cognitive) correlated with positive
attitudes toward the roles of bully (only affective empathy) and higher
empathy (both affective and cognitive) correlated with positive attitudes
toward role of defender, both empathy dimensions did not contribute to the
explained variance when the sociodemographic and moral disengagement
variables were considered. This result regarding moral disengagement is
particularly relevant for intervention because many prevention programs
stress empathy training (e.g., Pecukonis, 1990). We suggest that in addition
to empathy, or even perhaps instead of empathy, programs of antibullying
intervention could emphasize moral agency as inhibition of moral disengagement,
for example, focusing on the humanization of the victim. This
result presents an additional challenge for researchers because moral disengagement
instruments that clearly differentiate the processes by which it
operates need to be developed. In fact, the moral disengagement scale used
in the present study revealed a single-factor solution that does not differentiate
the subprocesses involved in moral disengagement and how these
processes predict positive attitudes toward bullying or negative attitudes
toward defending of victims.